I started playing games around the age of 3 or so, I can't remember how young I was but I distinctly remember playing Asteroids, Missile Command, F1 Pole Position, Space Invaders, and Pac-Man on my parents' Atari 2600. I was born in 1984 so that would put me at 1987, which I guess would make sense.

I got an NES for Christmas in '89 and was basically a die-hard Nintendo fanboy until '99 when I got a Playstation. The Nintendo 64 did horrible things to Nintendo fanboys, I remember when Square announced Final Fantasy 7 was going to be on the Playstation. I wept.

I'll play just about anything. I'm not attached to any particular genre, though I do love RPGs. And for some reason, I really like games that are excruciatingly difficult. Probably because I grew up with an NES and SNES when you had to be superhuman or have an unnaturally good memory to finish most games.

For years I've railed against it as being a watered down, base version of Unreal Tournament. For years I've avoided it because of the stigma attached to people who play it. And for years, I thought I was right.

Turns out, I was. But only partially.

If you haven't guessed by now, I'm talking about Halo.

I've always been a huge FPS fan, dating back to Doom and Doom 2 and all the way up to recent classics like Bioshock and Half-Life 2, but I've always had nothing but contempt for the Halo series. Why? Well, that's an interesting story...

For the past 4 or 5 years or so, I've been a pretty solitary gamer. Sure I would play some Soul Calibur 2 and Smash Bros. Melee here and there with some friends, but that was really the extent of my multiplayer gaming. I can attribute this to attending a difficult and time consuming college and having a difficult and time consuming major (Mathematics... ::shudder::). During this time, when I did have a free moment, most of my friends didn't, and a free moment was just that, a half hour here and there, not really enough time to set up a good match session with a couple friends where we would beat on each other and question each other's sexuality in equal measure.

But now I'm out of school and have assloads of free time every night. Literally. Assloads.

So I was sitting around the house yesterday and didn't really have anything I wanted to start investing a lot of time in. I just finished Metroid Prime 3 on Saturday and wasn't much in the mood to begin another quest to save some other world yet. So I've got an XBox 360 and one of my house mates has a copy of Halo 2. I figure, what the hell? I have nothing better to do.

Now going back to that whole solitary gamer thing, I have played Halo a little bit before. But I've mostly only played the single-player campaign. The phrase "woefully inadequate" comes to mind. I had played the multiplayer in the past but it was usually against people who were awesome. Playing Halo 2 with people who know what they're doing when you don't know what you're doing. Not so much fun...

So there I am, sitting in my living room, as I wait for my first online Halo 2 match to fire up. Get into the game, and *gasp*, I've killed someone! I chalk it up to beginner's luck at first, and then I start actually killing more people. Before I know it, I'm actually having fun. I'm instantly transported back to the days of playing Half-Life, Unreal Tournament and Team Fortress online.

Now I'm not going to go and say that Halo 2 is the greatest game ever made. It's not. But the multiplayer is definitely fun. And at this point I will be going out to pick up Halo 3 when it comes out. Whether it lives up to the hype or not, as long as there are tons of people playing it online, it should be a blast.

So that's my story. I went from an anti-fanboy (which is just as bad as being a fanboy) to a fan in a matter of hours.

If anyone around here still plays Halo 2, I should be on XBL fairly often this week and then probably Halo 3 sometime next week. Gamer tag: SlayerVin. I'm still pretty awful, so you should have some fun killing the shit out of me.

I loved BioShock just as much as the next guy, but I always have a couple minor little complaints about games that seem to slightly mar the experience. I'm a dick I guess.

Yahtzee however puts me to shame. I agree with everything he says in this post, which doesn't really discredit BioShock at all, he basically just says it "doesn't live up to the hype". And since in the last few weeks leading up to its release this game was touted as "the savior of the human race", it's fairly understandable.

Right before playing Bioshock I just finished Digital Devil Saga 2, so I don't really want to jump into Nocturne or Persona yet. And having just finished a game with a first person perspective I kinda want to play something a little different

So really, I'm debating which of the four FF games I should play.

I've completed FF III (all espers + side quests) and VII (Emerald and Ruby) many times each but have had a serious hankering for some classic Final Fantasy action lately.

I've heard really good things about XII but not sure if I want to dump 100 hours of my life into a game right now.

Thus is my dilemma.

My girlfriend suggested I flip a coin. I asked her to produce a 6 sided coin for me. She was not amused.

Any suggestions from people who've played FF XII, Metroid Prime 3, Nocturne or Persona 3???